Marketing Research
What is the Goal of Marketing Research
The main goal of marketing research is to gather data that reveals how the current marketing strategy is performing or which tactics are most likely to achieve the firm’s objectives. But it also evaluates the success of the campaign in progress and other aspects of marketing plan/campaign in order to increase the marketing expense to sales ratio in the favour of the latter.
The Field of Marketing Research
In addition to evaluating the performance of the current marketing campaign and forecasting the results of the marketing plan, marketing research also studies the consumers. It seeks to understand how to present products or service to the target consumers in order to encourage them to buy. This is achieved by assessing the sales rates (or sometimes the firm’s market share) after marketing campaign was launched or/and studying the performance of prior campaigns for similar products/service.
Besides researching the impact of different marketing tools on behaviour of the consumers, marketing research may also studies other companies. This is known as business-to-business research which is conducted to understand how businesses sell their products or services to other businesses.
Marketing Research Tools
Depending on the tools that are used, marketing research can be divided into:
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Qualitative marketing research. It studies particular aspects of the product or service on the basis of a small group of people. Example includes focus group in which a group of people is asked for their opinion about the product/service, its package, name, advertisement and similar things. It is usually done before the product/service is available to the general public.
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Quantitative marketing research. It aims to understand how the product/service is received by the target audience by using research tools such as survey data. On the basis of the data, the marketers determine if any aspect of marketing campaign requires changes in order to improve the reception of the product or service by the consumers.
Marketing Vs Market Research
Marketing and market research are often used interchangeably but they are two different types of research. In contrary to marketing research which wants to know how a particular marketing tool will influence the consumers or marketing processes themselves, market research studies the market as such. It is conducted to understand how the reception of a particular product or service is influenced by age and other factors such as gender, height of income, etc. with an aim to develop a target audience or group of consumers who are most likely to buy the product or service.
Market research often plays an important role in the selection and development of marketing strategy and tactics. It allows the marketers to determine the target audience and select the marketing tools accordingly. But in order to benefit from data of market research, the latter should be conducted before the development of a marketing plan.